From the frontlines of the format war, HD DVD is clearly losing ground fast. The landslide of bad news just keeps on coming for the HD DVD disc format; the world’s largest retail chain has asked the format to officially move out.

According to Susan Chronister on the official Walmart company blog, “By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players.” It seems Walmart’s decision to choose sides happened after Best Buy and Netflix both made recent announcements that they had decided to side with the Blu-ray camp. Susan then continued by pouring salt in the HD DVD wound by saying, “If you bought the HD [DVD] player like me, I’d retire it to the bedroom, kid’s playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard-def movies, and make space for a BD player.” Ouch.

Although it’s not completely over for HD DVD yet, unless you live under a rock, it is apparent that Blu-ray is now dominating the format war. It seems only now a matter of time, perhaps even a short while, that HD DVD may go the way of the Betamax.

The marketing guns have quieted now over the video format battlefield, and it appears that Blu-ray has emerged victorious. The Walmart announcement last week appears to have been the fatal blow to the HD DVD format, as Toshiba will proclaim it will officially withdraw from next-gen DVD market. An unknown source inside Toshiba told Reuters the news that Toshiba was indeed waving the white flag and ending the format war. “We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business,” said the source who also indicated Toshiba’s official HD DVD withdrawl announcement could be early this week.